


A Certain Appeal

by keyboardclicks



Series: "Men at Some Time are Masters of Their Fates" [2]
Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Crime, Gen, aj is a magpie he loves shiny things, bunny can't deal with this much excitement, rafflesweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 11:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10217006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyboardclicks/pseuds/keyboardclicks
Summary: Raffles slipped his treasure into the pocket of his covert coat, and we arranged the room otherwise exactly as we had found it.  About to leave, to slip out once again undetected, I felt relief at having an ordinary, boring night if burglary can be said to have such a thing.Then door swung open, and the electric light switched on.





	

Before meeting Raffles on that fateful Ides of March I had never found the silence of night to be so simultaneously comforting and frightful.  I never before knew, and indeed never thought I  _ would  _ know, how quietly a lock could be picked, a window opened, a drainpipe climbed.  My youthful fear of burglars was justified, I found, the more of one I became, realizing how easy it would have been for someone as skilled as ourselves to have made their way into my bedroom and hide beneath my bed or in one of the room’s dark corners, waiting to take the few very precious valuables my family owned right from under our noses.  Especially someone like Raffles, who although the handsomest men of England in the daylight, looked most frightful when donning the disguise of a tramp or ne’er-do-well.

“Take everything you can fit in your pockets,” AJ instructed, as if by this time I still needed instructions.  “I’m willing to bet the good lady’s diamond tiara is kept somewhere especially safe.  Though, the fact that these other trinkets are kept so unsecured causes me worry to that they may be rather paltry…”  He bit his lip and no less set to searching around the room frantically, yet still with almost complete silence.  Beneath the bed was clear, as were the bedside lockers.  I stuffed my pockets with the rings, broaches, and pocket watch found whilst rifling around in various drawers as Raffles checked carefully behind each of the paintings on the walls.

“No luck,” he murmured.

“Perhaps we ought to give it up,” I suggested.  The house’s occupants were not to be back for another hour, but I had learned not to trust the theatre as a distraction.  Not to mention the fact that the butler and maids were still in the house!  Anxiety swelled within me as I thought of the former returning early and the lady of the house, exhausted from an evening out, choosing to retire and finding us within her quarters!  “I’ve found plenty-surely this will be enough for now?”

“Don’t be foolish,” AJ replied.  “The diamonds in that tiara could finance us for months  _ each  _ if we play our cards right and I shan’t give it up when I’m sure it’s this close.”

“Are you very sure she didn’t wear it out?”  He had begun to check for any sort of false back in the wardrobe.  I aided by doing the same to the large bookcase that sat between the two large, rounded windows which lead onto the balcony.

“ _ Very _ ,” he assured.  “The good lady only ever wears the thing during gatherings in her own home; rather paranoid of losing it, I believe, or having it snatched when she’s too far into her dinner and drink to notice.”

“Perhaps that’s why they keep so few servants,” I mused.  “Afraid they’d turn against her and make off with her prized treasure.”

“I doubt even they know where she keeps it,” Raffles agreed.

Prodding the back of a drawer carefully with my fingers I easily recognized that the wood felt different somehow, and in applying the right amount of pressure I could feel the board’s slight give.

“Raffles!” I exclaimed quietly.  “I think I’ve found it!”  The shelf contained two drawers near its base, both of them filled with various magazines and newspapers, but it was the one on the left which aroused my suspicions.  Raffles quickly dropped to his knees beside me and reached in to press with his own fingers, a smile lighting up his features as he did so.

“Well done, Bunny!” he praised.  “Yes, this is just the thing.  I’d stake my life upon it!  Come, help me try and pry it loose… ah!  There we are!”

The small, thin plank of wood which served as the drawer’s false back was easily slipped out once enough pressure was applied, and we set it on the floor next to the small pile of outdated periodicals previously removed.  From the space which had been revealed Raffles produced a medium-sized wooden box, quite ornately carved and decorated in its own right, and there was not a doubt in my mind that it housed the treasure Raffles so keenly sought.

“What a lovely piece,” Raffles observed, turning the box around and around in his hands.  “I’m almost tempted to take it, too, don’t you know?  Would make a fine bit of decoration on my mantle…”  But he shook his head with a slight frown curling his lip.  “No, no, it’s much too big to carry discretely…  Oh well, I suppose; it’s contents will have to do.”

For all the trouble gone through to hide the box, it was not even capable of being locked.  Flipped open in an instant, Raffles revealed that which lay inside was as beautiful and valuable as he had described; an ornate, silver tiara encrusted with no less than two dozen diamonds of various sizes, each a well cut and glittering beauty in its own right.  I was speechless; Raffles was in awe.

“By jove…  Oh it’s almost a crime in itself to know what we’re to do with it,” he said, examining the intricate curves of silver with the tip of his finger.  “If only you or I had a use for it then perhaps it could be saved.”

“And if it would not be recognized by every lady in high society,” I added.  Raffles chuckled.

“Yes, that too.  Well, no use thinking on it much.”

With one final, appreciative glance at how the diamonds glittered in the moonlight which illuminated the room, AJ slid the tiara carefully into the inner pocket of his covert coat, and we set to replacing the non-valuable contents of the room exactly as we had found them.

“Best to leave the way we came,” Raffles decided, gesturing towards the balcony windows through which we had previously entered.  “No telling where the servants are at this point and I don’t want to chance meeting the-”

The bedroom door suddenly swung open, and the electric lights were switched on.  I jumped back in surprise.  Raffles froze.  In the doorway stood a young woman, undoubtedly one of the maids.  I guessed she had come to prepare the room for her mistress’s return, but instead had stumbled across us.  In an instant Raffles grabbed my hand and began to pull me away from where I stood, urging me towards the window just in time to hear the young lady let out a high and terrified scream and see her reflection collapse in fright.

“Quickly!”

With no more thought to silence we hurried out onto the balcony and down the drainpipe as footsteps of the other servants rushed towards us.  Raffles lead me across the yard and climbed over the garden wall before pulling me over after him, not stopping or for a moment glancing back as the call of, “Thieves!  Come back here, damn you!” rung out from behind us.

I followed Raffles through more yards and over more walls before he chanced to let us rest beneath a number of large oak trees behind a darkened house.  I fell to my knees, gasping for breath while my heart beat so hard and fast I thought it would either burst from exhaustion or simply stop!  Raffles was not even winded.

“What are we going to do?!” I asked between hard gulps of air.  “They’ll have the police here any minute!”

“They didn’t see our faces,” AJ said, pulling off his mask and shoving it into his pocket.  Then he knelt down near me undo mine, clever fingers carefully slipping past my ears and to the back of my head where the string was tied.  “Except for that maid but let us merely hope she doesn’t wake up for some time and didn’t get a very good look.  I cannot  _ believe _ she snuck up on us like that!  I didn’t hear a single footstep!”

Raffles gave me his hand and helped me off the ground, though I was still panting.  

“Come on, rabbit.  Best not to stick around here too long; if the police will be on this street any minute, as you said, then we had better be as far away from it as we can manage.”

We climbed over another fence and emerged on Cleveland Street, a road which intersected that of the house we had just burgled, but from which you could not see it.  Raffles removed his covert coat as we walked along the pavement and folded it over his arm, citing that even a small change in appearance could help divert suspicion.

We walked without saying a word.  I was acutely aware of every small clink as the jewelry in my pockets shifted and hit against one another, and each noise set my already tired nerves on end.  I did not again feel remotely safe until we at last emerged on Tottenham Court Road; it was much easier to hide when surrounded by dozens of other gentlemen and ladies all out and about, but still I could not relax.  I knew I would not until we were safely in Raffles’ chambers and I need not listen to the infernal noise of the jewelry in my pockets.

“We’re merely two gentlemen on their way home from an evening out,” he soothed before hailing a cab.  “No need to look so glum, old chap.  When all is said and done it could have gone worse.  What matters is that we made it away with our treasure.”

He was right, of course; it could have gone  _ much  _ worse.  It could have been a butler who found us, rather than the fainting maid.  We could have been shot at, or pursued, or been captured trespassing through someone’s yard!  We could have met with an officer on one of the streets we passed through and been apprehended as soon as he heard that there had been a burglary on Bolsover Street perpetrated by two gentlemen in evening dress!  But I did not at the moment care that if could have been worse; I simply wished it had been better, or to that point, not happened at all!

I did not speak to Raffles at all during the hansom ride, nor as we walked up the stairs to his rooms.  When we entered I emptied my pockets in a huff, relieved to no longer feel the weight of metal dragging down my coat, then threw myself into a chair at the hearth.

“A profitable evening,” AJ said, not at all bothering to indulge my soured mood and beginning to empty his own pockets alongside what had been the contents of mine.  He shifted the rings and broaches with his hand, ran his fingers over the casing of the watch and chain I had found on the bedside locker, then picked up and examined the tiara in the low firelight.

“Truly a treasure,” he said softly.  “Not exactly the crown jewels, of course, but my gosh they’re very near the same.”

I watched him examine the ornate piece of silver and diamonds, admiring them as much for their aesthetic value as for their monetary one.  I knew that, had we not been so hard up, Raffles would likely have kept the thing for weeks simply for the pleasure of looking at it.  If he could have he would have stolen only the tiara and kept it as a decorative souvenir, a reminder of yet another evening we were almost caught.  AJ seemed to love those nights most of all; I think the sense of risk, of adrenalin, was by that point becoming more appealing to him than the simple pleasure of money.  They were not stories he could tell to anyone but me, but the sense of so narrowly evading the law’s grasp awoke in him an excitement I could not myself say I understood.

“Well, I think we’re in need of a drink,” my friend said finally, setting the tiara down in favor of pouring us each a whisky and soda. 

“To crime,” Raffles smiled, raising his glass and looking at me expectantly.  Eager as I was, I had already taken a drink.

“Yes,” I sighed, less enthusiastic than he but still allowing myself to smile and raise my slightly emptier glass; Raffles smiled down at me in a familiar, knowing way, “To crime.”

 

 


End file.
